Baseball

Baseball was first played on Nantucket in the 1860s by college boys from Harvard and Yale who brought the new sport with them when they came for the summer. The appeal of the game quickly spread among the locals, and by 1878 the Nantucket High School team was playing the Coffin School team.The first report of a contest between Nantucket and ’Sconset teams was published in the Inquirer and Mirror on August 2, 1879:

The most notable event of the season at Siasconset took place on Monday afternoon. It was a game of base ball between the clubs of Siasconset and Nantucket.The field was well chosen and laid out, and the game was attended by nearly all the inhabitants and guests of the village — ladies and gentlemen. The contest was close and a creditable skill was displayed on both sides.

The rivalry between the town and ’Sconset continued for decades, although they played together as the Scontuckets to beat a Yale team in 1889. In 1891, a benefit for the village team featured amateur theatricals—’ Sconset’s specialty—and raised $200, which may have paid for the fine uniforms seen in a photograph from the period.

The ’Sconset summer visitors of the early 1900s were also fans of professional baseball — eager to follow their home team, the theater folk from New York got sport bulletins via the wireless station, where the flag was lowered to half-staff if the Giants lost.

'Sconset Baseball Club
Louis S. McCreary, Carleton Mather, Hunt Walker, Thomas King, Willett P. Spooner, Tom Cummings, Charlie Spooner, and "Pop" Warren
P1669

A digital exhibition by the Nantucket Historical Association